Your explanation is charitable and possibly what happened.

Is it also possible that this person lacked the ability to put himself in someone else's shoes (which is quite common)? He was unable to see that words can deeply hurt another person until those words hurt him. Then he called for people to be fired for saying those words because it actually affected him.

They say this is often what happens to people who hated the fact that they had to pay into the social safety net their entire lives, but then realized the value of this safety net when they ran into an unfortunate circumstance later in life. At this point, they will often complain the safety net is not sufficient to help people with their unique circumstances.

Another example may be the soybean farmers across america who are now demanding a bailout (which they will inevitably get as they did during the first trump admin) after voting in the man who destroyed their industry with his non-free market policies.